Monolith is something of a mix between space and castle aesthetics. It's what the medieval era might look like on another planet. An ancient tower guarded by an aging patriarch juts up from the landscape as a marker or refuge of some sort—I really don't have a story—but there's an appropriate element of mystery to it.
The bignette is built around the useless olive green ship hull, and I did a bit of experimenting with stratified rock formations around it. On a whim, I had bought myself 300 or so dirt cheap 1x2 dark bley slopes off of Bricklink, and I used every one of them in this build. I also tried out a new tree technique with bits of brown flex tubing. But the best part of this build, of course, is the olive cheese.
Enjoy!

About this creation

Special thanks to Max Pointner and his family for feeding my olive green obsession with the Chima boat set that has all of the fun olive parts.

A new tree technique built from pieces of flex tubing.

A look at the SNOTed rockwork and stratification.

I experimented with an alternative presentation style in this shot. I'm not sold on it yet.

This really is beautiful. It looks fantastic, and the layers of rock look really great. It looks very much like a space shuttle, doesn't it? I guess that kind of adds to the mystery. Maybe long ago some astronauts were stranded... who knows? The only section I felt might have needed a little something more is the section of dark bley bricks at the top of the tower, just under the peak of the boat. It contrasts somewhat the sleek look of the rest of the build. Other than that, incredible work! Very well done.

Truly a beautiful and powerful build, thank you for posting Paul. I really love how you're bringing such a high level of artistic composition to your works, the patterns on the monolith and the multi-tiered rockwork really elevate this past what I generally expect to see online. I like that last full shot with the reflection and gradient backdrop, did you strobe it on plastic or is it photoshopped? In either case, a very convincing shot.

Sweet work! I love the colour scheme and the overall look of the piece. Very different to anything that we usually see here on the 'pages. I particularly love the SNOT'ed rockwork, especially the angles you've got going on them! Great job!
--Blast--

Great MOC for sure, but I do not agree with your statement that this could be how castle looked like on another planet. Good idea for sure, but the point of alien architecture being so different is high technology allowing crazy structures to be built. If you tackle this idea again, try a more realistic approach, but still fundamentaly different from our norm.

So when they say the moon is made of cheese, they simply mean olive cheese slopes. Guess Wallace and Gromit should've been alerted beforehand... Awesome stuff. Some great techniques buried in that olive green bonanza. Neat space Gandalf - 'paddling the bottoms of martians everywhere.' Awesome as always, Paul!